Members left on Thursday for the Southern Tournament at Auburn University.

And the club has a much larger destination in April.

Nathan Brown loves the sport of tennis and what it means to UTC Club Tennis.

He and Taylor Bounds, who went to the same high school, are the leaders of the club.

Brown detailed how much the club has grown. "When Taylor and I first joined when we were freshmen, there was six or seven people on the team. Now there's about 40, 45 members on the team, so we've come a long way."

Brown and Bounds started recruiting at freshman orientations and it spread from there.

The club practices twice a week, Monday through Thursday. Bounds explained her attraction to the club sport. "I knew I wanted to keep playing, but I didn't want to do the whole college sport thing, I needed to get jobs, needed to focus on school so this was perfect for me to do."

The club is divided into "A," "B," "C" and "D" players.

The A, B and C divisions travel to tournaments.

They left for Auburn today. "For the Southern Championship. This is actually a really big tournament sponsored by the U.S.T.A. so we would have a chance to earn a bid to Nationals at this tournament, but we've already earned one for getting Club of the Year," Brown said.

Bounds can't wait to get to The Plains. "Oh I'm so excited. Auburn, we have gone since my sophomore year. That's always been one of my favorite ones because it's just a big tournament and there's a bunch of different schools going."

Most of the club members are former high school players.

And as Brown said, they are the national Club of the Year.

They earned that distinction by their results, community clinics and an essay he wrote.

To grow from such small beginnings to a national tournament participant doesn't surprise him. He said with a grin, "I always knew we would make it to Nationals, I always knew."